


TO THE EDGE OF EVERYTHING WE KNOW, BELOW A BRUISED SKY

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fantasy, Kind of creepy, M/M, Revolution, Runaway Princes, a little bit gross, grave-robbing, princes and body-snatching paupers, revolutionary terrorists, riku with a ponytail
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One boy just wants to believe in something; another believes in nothing but revolution. Some boys are no-name ghosts flashing silver and ice-blue under dark hoods. One boy just wants to see the world. // KH fantasy AU. highly influenced by current studies. riso, akuroku. T+, M for future sex. a little grisly. it's gonna be great, guys. great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TO THE EDGE OF EVERYTHING WE KNOW, BELOW A BRUISED SKY

**{rothschilde.}**

The night is cast in shades of blue—from the moonlight, from the shadows, from the swath of deep cobalt that cradles the stars in fog and smog.

Riku throws his bag across his back and jumps, catches a tree branch, kicks up a foot. He scales the cemetery spokes and slides down to land nimbly on his toes on the other side.

The angels watch him. Stone ones, at least, chipped and mossy granite, depending on seniority, hands forever chiseled clasped and lips in little O’s. Sightless eyes, unturning faces, following him between the crooked gravestones and gnarled, naked smoketrees and laceleaf. The winterfire is by now long-gone, dogwoods shivering in the cold; even the teeth of the chimney-black cemetery spokes can’t reach the sky though they seem to struggle desperately towards it.

It’s the autumnal festival season; someone’s lit fat ivory candles here and there, planted in Jack O’Lanterns and garlands of dead flowers. Paper lanterns twist and turn, chains creaking. The most nearby priest came around at twilight to ring the holy bells thrice and bless the cemetery, but that’s a regular occurrence and now the cemetery’s all his.

Music drifts down the narrow, slithering road from any one of the sloping communal apartments up there to St. Nicholas the Thaumaturge’s, not quite a pauper’s graves but not at all a thing like Highgates.

The night wind tugs gently at Riku’s knees and elbows as he slips through the shadows, testing the ground here and there with a booted toe. Hard, here. Undisturbed there. But wait—no grass and soft, fragile, loose earth.

_Yes_.

Riku drops his bag into clumped ferns and grass with a limp _thud_ and rattle. The distant song is almost familiar, not one with which he grew up but one he’s heard many a time since leaving home.

The wind swallows up the quick chatter as he pulls his work mask out of his bag and slides it on. Untucks his little ponytail, tugs down his goggles, flips up his dark hood. Leather gloves, already on. He does not need a dark lantern. He tosses the wooden spade from one hand back to the other, frivolously, and then he shoves it into the earth and begins to dig.

He can get to a fresh coffin in ten minutes or less—too many are so shallow nowadays, even with all the reforms. No mortsafes here, either. Those are much popular in wealthier districts. He loves the burn in his shoulders and forearms from the shoveling, the tightness in his sides and lower back. There’s something incredibly rewarding about physical labor, sometimes.

Canvas, to one side of the grave. Sound-deadening tarp.

_Crack_ —

The dirt-clodded coffin bursts like rotten fruit at the angled stab of his shovel and the weight of soil. Riku peels back the splintered wood where he can, where nails aren’t crisscrossed like patchwork seams.

“Yes,” Riku whisper-sighs aloud this time, pausing on his haunches to inspect the spoils. Dainty little feet and ankles, white gown. It’s a woman, young woman. Should be easy. What was her name? Riku didn’t look. Meredith, maybe. Nastya. No, she looks like a Lysistrata, but then he’s only just read that play.

Zexion utters a little scoff of disapproval from overhead. He came up while Riku was digging. He’s so much regal resignation in such a tiny form and he always knows when Riku’s thinking too much.

“You’re not supposed to wonder about their names,” Zexion scolds, voice muffled by his mask. “Don’t worry about who they were. What matters is what they are now—science and teacups.”

Worms and moldy leaves squish underfoot as he steps aside for Riku to hoist the dead girl with her pallid petal skin and limp limbs out of the grave. A piece of her coffin gives way; he catches his balance then drags himself back up out of the earth, too.

The girl’s dress is too much like a table cloth, lace and dainty buttons, hair swept out of her orchid-white face. Her lips are as dark as her hair. Strange, how heavy a person is when void of life, even as delicate as she. Still, Riku lets Zexion tie her up and fold her diligently into the sack. Respectfully, almost. A care for the craft.

Once, when Riku was very young, and the world was too frozen to dig a grave, his mother and father were forced to keep his sister’s body in the cellar until they could break earth for her in the earliest spring. She looked a little bit like Lysistrata for three months straight—dead, but not yet putrefying.

Luckily, this is only October, and they’re carrying the body together once they put the sack in the traveling trunk.

“Constabulary,” Riku hisses, dodging back into the shadows beyond a stuttering gas lamp a few blocks from the graveyard, work tools back in his bag and the song from the apartments stuck in his head.

Zexion follows him, straining with his end of the trunk.

But it’s not constabulary—just a small hooded figure, dim streetlights winking off a silver chain at the throat, the buckle of a stuffed leather satchel. The figure pauses at the corner. Riku holds his breath. He feels Zexion bristle in the dark beside him. The figure hesitates. Riku’s hackles raise to see someone alone this late at night; it’s either stupidity, or warning. The figure turns decisively and moves off out of sight like whoever it was had forgotten which way to go for a moment.

“Go,” Zexion urges, jerking the trunk in Riku’s hands.

Riku readjusts his grip. They go.

* * *

Vexen digs in his pockets with a judgmental sniff, hair tied back out of his way and wrinkles cutting deeper into his face with the impatient frown. As if it will make it any easier, he shoves his glasses up atop his head and finally, unrelatedly, finds his munny.

Two bank notes and some change for Riku, a single bank note for Zexion.

“ _Skazh’_?” Zexion complains flatly— _excuse me?_

Vexen shrugs, silhouetted in the alley doorway of his anatomist’s office. His lip curls. “You work for me in the day,” he reminds Zexion indifferently.

Riku slides a glance Zexion’s way. Zexion heaves a sigh, tossing hair out of his eyes only for it to fall back in place again. “All right,” he mumbles, hunching into his layered scarves. “True.”

Vexen ignores him. His cold gray eyes veer over to Riku. “You could, too,” he adds, with a strange nasally inflection on which Riku doesn’t want to dwell too long.

“Good night, doctor,” Zexion snaps, grabbing Riku by the wrist and dragging him out of the alley.

“Until the next, resurrectionists!” Vexen calls back quietly, tightly, before slamming his back door shut.

The snap of three bolts locking from within echoes after them down the alley as they leave.

* * *

“Yeah, another round—on me. Plus a third. We’ve got someone else coming.”

Roxas cuts his eyes over to Axel, fighting the twitch of an unamused smile. He leans forward on folded arms, letting the layers of sound and light settle over him like a dip in the lake. The bar is dimly-lit by lamps and lanterns, a glow of an atmosphere up here under the bells of an old clock tower, a panoramic view over the city at night from the long open windows.

“You don’t have to,” Roxas says, fingers curling to hold the ends of his sleeves over his knuckles.

“Don’t care,” Axel grunts back, smirking around a cigarette and the jump of a struck flame. He lights his cigarette, snaps his lighter shut. Draws deep and eases the smoke out through his teeth, flashing Roxas a tipsy green glance. “I wanted to,” he insists. “Deal with it.”

Roxas sighs, yawning into the back of one hand. Demyx has already gone, and Larxene too; the bells ringing out from other belfries and churches around Rothschilde mean Riku will be here soon. A table across the way erupts in laughter and shouts, whistles, cheers.

“You have to work tonight?” Axel asks over the noise, raking a hand through the violent red of his hair, tucking stubborn locks behind his pierced ears.

“No, I’m here, aren’t I?” Roxas replies kindly.

Axel flicks cigarette ash and winks at the waitress who slides by with their new drinks. “Well,” he says, toasting prematurely with his fresh glass, “I’m doing the letterbox rounds tonight if you want to join.”

Roxas snorts. Axel looks highly offended—still—and Roxas wilts guiltily, frowning.

For a breath or two, nothing exists beyond their table, the lingering tension, the hush heavy with words waiting to be spoken. But they aren’t. They never are. Whether it’s about the Organization—the Nobodies—or about the Children, the Resistance, the regret and betrayal and the heartache because regret and betrayal weren’t enough to divide them—they’re never spoken.

Roxas clears his throat, ripping his eyes from Axel’s, much as he doesn’t want to. He’s not sure if he wants Axel to stop pretending the words aren’t waiting to be spoken. He’s not sure at all. “No,” he murmurs. “Will you be alone? I don’t want you going alone. Can’t Demyx go with you?”

He doesn’t want Axel wandering the Rothschilde streets slipping Resistance leaflets into letterboxes and doorsteps alone. He doesn’t want to have to get him out of custody at sunrise again. He doesn’t want to worry about him _not_ being in custody at sunrise, but—

“Ah—” Axel says around a sharp swallow. “There’s Riku.”

Roxas turns, catching the silver of Riku almost instantly. It’s not hard; in all the shadows and the dark colors of his clothes, his pale face and paler hair is like a flash of light. All the doom and gloom of almost-honesty releases. Roxas perks up, a smile breaking across his face.

“Riku!” he calls, waving. “Over here, we have a drink for you!”

Riku slides down at the table and lets Axel pat him hard on the back, swing an arm around his shoulder. He holds out his silver cigarette case. Riku plucks a cigarette out immediately, sticks it between his teeth and lets Axel light it for him.

“You smell like a crypt,” Axel compliments.

“A graveyard, not a crypt,” Roxas corrects. “Jerk.”

Axel waves a hand as if to say, _Same difference_. He says before Riku can even answer, because he’s been chomping at the bit for this, for Riku, for the chance to fill him in on some great Organization whisper he’s been withholding even from Roxas for the last hour or so:

“They’ve got a foreigner in the jail tonight.”

Riku raises a brow, throwing back a long drink. He licks his lips. Sighs. Smokes a little. Roxas fidgets, waiting politely for him to ask first.

Which Riku does. He asks, “What do you mean?”

Axel’s face darkens in that way that means business, the way that seems dangerous and radical and never fails to make Roxas very, very uneasy (and unfortunately also very, very loyal). He lowers his voice and husks, “I mean—someone without a dwelling permit for Rothschilde. For _anywhere_.”

“No dwelling permit?” Roxas echoes, laughing coldly. “That’s a dumb move.” But then more critical possibilities occur to him and a wave of adrenaline snaps through; he sits up straight, eyes jumping from Axel to Riku and back again. “Is that true? Demyx knows for sure?”

“Yeah,” Axel retorts, like he’s frustrated Roxas suddenly cares but he won’t do Organization letterbox duty with him.

“So what?” Riku mumbles.

“You’ve got dirt in your hair, by the way,” Roxas points out.

Riku swipes at his hair until he’s confident he’s gotten the dirt out. He’s looking at Axel in that dark, conspiratorial way of his, the one that matches Axel’s, the one that makes Roxas feel very left out and impatient. Well, not tonight.

“No dwelling permit means he’ll go on trial for vagrancy,” Roxas cuts in, a little nervous because he doesn’t want this to make either of them think he’s interested in the Organization again.

“It does,” Axel confirms flatly.

“But where’s he actually from?” Riku murmurs, obligingly.

“I don’t know, Demyx just said he’s got no permit—”

“You think he’s a Nobody, or…?”

“You won’t know unless you see him,” Roxas snaps, eyes wide and wild. Riku and Axel look at him like they’ve forgotten he was there. His heart is in his throat. It’s not that he’s excited; okay, he’s excited. But not because of the Organization grapevine or some stupid prophecy nobody really believes in. It’s a strange, heavy sort of excitement because he remembers when he didn’t have a permit, either.

He looks back at them—at Riku, at Axel.

“No,” Axel says. “Don’t give us that look.”

“What look?” Roxas whines.

“Demyx will take care of it, Roxas.”

Roxas hopes he’s still giving them _that look_. He’s not sure what look it is, but he knows it usually works.

Axel utters a harsh scoff and rolls his eyes. But apparently he does not expect Riku to actually consider Roxas’s silent plea. Riku does. He sits, squinting at Roxas across the table—lips parted, chin just slightly inclined. Roxas doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but he’s thinking hard about something. He tosses loose hair out of his face, stands with a scrape of his chair.

“Okay,” Riku says firmly. “Fine. Let’s go to the jail and see.”

Axel throws his cigarette down and sputters, “What? Come on, now!”

* * *

Roxas struggles to keep up, still wrestling into his coat as he chases Riku down the winding stairs of the clock tower. His ears ring as the bar noise fades into the rustling echoes of two a.m. Axel’s stomping footsteps trail behind, paired with irritated muttering.

“What jail?” Riku calls back over his shoulder, over Roxas’s head.

“St. Sebastian!” Axel snaps back. “Hey, I’ve got letterboxes tonight, so have at it, you two, but don’t mention my name, got it?”

Roxas spins on his heel as he hits the cobbles of the street, breath already coming in frantic bursts. He doesn’t want Riku to get too far ahead, but he needs to tell Axel to be careful.

“ _Byt’ v’bezopasnosti_ ,” Roxas gasps— _Stay safe, love_. He grits his teeth against a grimace, hoping Axel lets the obvious worry slide.

Axel stops short on the pavement, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets and hair dancing about his temple. He looks startled—and then pleased, relieved. He lets it slide, though. He nods. He sticks a new cigarette between his teeth and lifts one hand in brief farewell, saying, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, brats.”

* * *

The constable is not answering his questions anymore—not that he answered much to begin with, just little grunts and grumbles and snippets like, “You’re the only one tonight,” and “St. Sebastian’s Holding, that’s where you are.” Earlier, he picked through Sora’s satchel, then threw it down under his desk up the hall. When Sora insisted the officer had it all wrong, he wasn’t illegal, he just couldn’t disclose where he came from and couldn’t explain why he didn’t have a dwelling permit (whatever that was; if he had one and didn’t know it, it was somewhere in his father’s offices) or why he didn’t check in with the traveler’s post if he was, as he explained in exasperation, just innocently traveling.

“Bloody vagrants,” the constable muttered to himself after locking Sora in the cramped little nook of a cell, all cobwebs and mold and grimy stone.

So Sora heaved a sigh and crossed his arms, deflating down into the only seat—a stool with a wobbly leg—and now he’s been sitting in the cold damp dark trying very hard to figure out how to escape from this mess.

Time passes in strange ways in the dark.

His pocket watch says it’s nearing two-thirty now, and the stool is making his back hurt. He’s seen the cells under the palace before; at least this place is better than they are. At least he’s alone. The constable won’t tell him what’s coming once morning arrives, but Sora is confident he’ll conjecture a convincingly sorrowful tale by then and they’ll just have to let him go. They’ll just have to. Or, if he’s stuck here, he’ll have to stick it out because Dunyasha and Grisha will be after him sooner than later and not that he wants that, but it’s the lesser of two evils, they’ll convince this place to let him go—

The constable’s talking. But there’s no one else.

Confused, curious, Sora slides off the stool and moves over to the rusty bars, leaning as far against them as he possibly can to see down the narrow corridor to the officer’s nook. Lamplight makes the shadows swell and throb on the walls there, cracked plaster and musty wood, like his mother’s vacation house except much less homey. He hears the constable sigh impatiently. He hears a voice coming from outside the building, muffled and faint but very deliberate. A door opens. There are footsteps—more than the constable’s waddling gait, this time.

Sora shuffles away from the approaching lamplight, nervous. More nighttime prisoners, maybe? He didn’t think about situations like this when he left home, what he’d do, how he’d handle himself. He didn’t really expect he’d have to, honestly. And maybe that was incredibly stupid of him. Never mind. It was, indeed, stupid.

The constable lifts the lamp to throw light into the cell—as much as the lamp will allow, anyway. Sora catches more of his surroundings in the new dance of shadows. Cracked mirror, wash basin, lopsided stool.

Looking at him from the free side of the bars, flanking the constable’s left, are two young men. Probably not much older than Sora himself, anyway. One is actually kind of tiny-looking, with wispy blond hair poking out from under a tweed cap and a coat whose sleeves almost pass his own hands, scarf dangling loose down his chest. The other is taller, a little broader, with even lighter hair tied back out of his eyes and a heavy-lidded look of boredom stamped across his face.

“Yup,” this silver-haired one says, eyes sharp and almost colorless in the flash of lamplight. “That’s him, all right. How much do I owe you to release him before morning?”

“What?” Sora says. “Excuse me, if all I needed to do was pay, I can do that, if you return my satchel—”

The constable starts to mumble bitterly to himself again about soliciting.

“I wasn’t _soliciting_ ,” Sora argues.

The constable fumbles for the key to the cell. He hands the lamp to the silver-haired one, demandingly. The stranger holds the lamp up and continues to squint at Sora through the bars as if this is all his fault.

“It’s me,” he says through his teeth. “Your _friend_ , Riku, remember?”

Sora is keenly aware of the confusion twisting his face, head tipped and shoulders drawn up. “What?” he says again.

“He just needs sleep,” the little blond one hurries to explain, laughing shyly. “I can’t believe he said he didn’t have a dwelling permit. He must have left it at home or something. Again, we’re so sorry, Meister—Meister…?”

“Meister Readley,” the constable reintroduces himself, struggling to shove the cell gate open. He snatches the lamp back, and the munny the silver-haired fellow digs out of his inner pockets, too. “Next time, don’t let the dandy leave the house without his permit, understand? This is the first time I’ve seen him and the last time I want to see him.”

“Apologies.” The silver-haired one gestures for Sora to join him and the blond. “We realize your night was just so incredibly busy.”

The constable snorts.

Sora opens his mouth to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know you two.” But then he realizes this is probably his only chance to get out without any more questions, so he snaps his mouth shut again and scampers out, elbows past the two who’ve paid for his release, and saves his bag from the constable’s office.

Gods above, a gulp of fresh air after an hour and a half in that dank, suffocating cell has Sora clinging to a lamppost outside the Constabulary Holding.

The blond catches up with him shortly, face red and breath leaving little clouds on the chilly autumn night as he circles the lamppost to meet Sora face to face and cries, “Who is the man in the moon?”

Sora’s nose wrinkles. “What?” he says for maybe the umpteenth time.

The blond wilts, face darkening. His friend rounds the lamppost too, dropping a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Roxas, give it up,” he mutters. “The kid’s not a Nobody.”

Sora doesn’t even say _What?_ again. He just frowns at the two before him, trying his best to gauge the level of danger associated. He knows he needs to be more careful; it’s his own damn fault he got thrown in jail, even though it’s not his fault he doesn’t know about dwelling permits. He has to remember, as much as he wants to succumb to the wonderment, the curiosity—he can’t let it leave him vulnerable.

“Thank you,” he says, once he realizes they’re both gawking at him because they’re waiting for him to say something. “For um, getting me out.”

The blond—Roxas—nods awkwardly. He’s looking at Sora a lot less resentfully than his friend is. “Where are you from?” he murmurs.

Sora chews the inside of his lower lip. It’s strange, but kind of relieving they don’t seem as suspicious of him as, say, the night constabulary. In fact, they seem only half-interested. But maybe he’s in luck. “I’m just traveling,” he explains flatly, not sure what else to say.

“What’s your name?” Roxas asks.

“Ah…” Sora doesn’t think it’s too risky to be truthful. “Sora,” he obliges, with a little bob of the head.

“Roxas,” Roxas officially introduces himself. He looks expectantly to his friend.

The silver-haired one sighs. “Riku.”

“Oh, bless you,” Sora says.

Roxas starts to laugh or cough or both, like he doesn’t want to upset his friend. His friend has a look on his face like he’s just bitten into something pinchingly sour.

“No,” he mutters. “I didn’t sneeze. That’s my name.” He doesn’t give Sora time to apologize, even though Sora’s already stumbling over the words. Riku—which is not a sneeze, after all—demands, “Where are you headed?”

Sora’s heart sinks and then starts to thunder. He feels like he’s being put to some sort of test, but maybe that’s only because he knows he’s not telling the whole truth. They don’t. He has to remember that. They don’t know. “Ah—well—” What did he say in the last town again? “The forest. Down south?”

“The black beech forest?” Riku asks.

“Yes!” Sora nods.

Riku scowls. “The black beech forest is in the northwest, between here and Saint-Lucca.” He looks to the blond. “Roxas, he’s not a Nobody. Happy? Bye.”

Riku turns on his heel and starts to stalk away, hands shoved in his pockets. Roxas, seeming mildly betrayed, continues staring at Sora. And then he slowly turns to follow Riku. Sora can hear them talking in low, private voices. Riku says, “You owe me money,” or something. Roxas mumbles, “I’m really sorry—”

Sora is desperate, though.

He’s a little shaken from the whole imprisonment thing.

He’s starting to realize he does not know everything he should about the world, which is frightening in many ways. He’s fucked. On his own, he’s absolutely fucked.

He fidgets, throat raw, chest tightening. Tears bite the backs of his ears—angry, frustrated, helpless tears. But he manages to keep the emotions at bay, for the most part. He cries, “ _Wait!_ ”

And lo and behold, the two strangers in long dark coats stop and turn and look back at him.

Trying to calm his pounding heart, Sora clutches his satchel close and jogs across the empty cobbled circus to them, stopping a few yards away to be polite.

“I don’t know where to go,” he husks, apologetically. “I’m traveling—honestly, I am. But I can’t tell you anything else. Can you—do you know where there’s a hotel still letting rooms at this hour? Where can I get a dwelling permit? Can I pay you back for—the constable?”

“That’s funny,” Riku says, his voice so smooth and cool on the night between them, as Roxas looks anxiously between him and Sora and back again. “You act like we’re going to trust you as easy as you apparently trust us. Are you a moron, or what?”

Sora’s jaw tightens; man, this Riku guy just gets him all riled up like some of the guards and priests back at home, like his uncle and his grandfather—okay, maybe not precisely like that, but it’s the same sense of needing to impress—

“I know where you can get a dwelling permit,” Roxas peeps, half hidden behind Riku’s left shoulder.

A silence spins out between them—tense, and thick. Finally, Riku wilts in defeat. He casts a look at his blond friend, and a look at Sora—a once-over, sure enough—and then after another long moment laden with coming words, he says like he sees no other option, “Stay with us tonight. You obviously have no idea what you’re doing and I’m not going to have your getting jumped or murdered on my conscience forever.”

Relief surges through Sora’s veins. “Really?” he cries. “I’ll pay you—I thank you so much—”

Riku snorts. “But stop talking so formally.” He shrugs, waves a hand. Says to his friend Roxas again: “Happy?”

* * *

They put him up in the parlor of the flat, just two and a half rooms made into a home when old Rothschilde manors were converted and divided into cramped residential buildings. Half the parlor is also the kitchen; a door on one side leads to the washroom, a door on the other to a hall so tight a man can’t spread his arms full, Roxas’s room on the left and Riku’s on the right.

Roxas is far too pleased by this sudden interruption of routine, parading back and forth from closet to divan with blankets and quilts and pillows, washing a glass and filling it with distilled water, lining up candles and matches and Gods, even a tumbler of bourbon—“In case you can’t sleep right away,” he says to Sora. “Your nerves must be fried.”

Riku just leans against the window that overlooks the river and smokes a hand-rolled cigarette, shaking his head.

Sora, in a sofa nest of goose-down bedclothes and a borrowed shirt, looks out at Roxas and whispers, “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“We could rob you blind or kill you in your sleep,” Riku reminds.

“But we _won’t_ , and we wouldn’t ever,” Roxas corrects.

Jesus, Roxas is eating this up. Tomorrow he’ll say, _Fuck the Nobodies_ and _I don’t believe in any prophecy_. But the thing is, Riku knows he does. He doesn’t believe in planting bombs at aristocrats’ masquerades or assassinating government officials, but he does believe in the prophecy. He believes in helping strangers who remind him of himself—vagrant, helpless, vulnerable—because much as he tries to be hard, he’s still soft. And Riku believes in Roxas’s happiness, so.

“I’ll be gone tomorrow as soon as I’ve got a permit,” Sora vows, like a church painting angel with those big stormy blue eyes, tired, heavy. How far has he traveled, Riku wonders? It’s like wondering dead girls’ names. Useless.

They leave him nestled into blankets, his cloak folded over the back of a walnut-armed chair.

In the hall between their rooms, Riku grabs Roxas by the elbow. “He could be playing us, you know,” he whispers. “You practically do the same for a living, don’t you? Profiting off other people’s pity?”

“Excuse you,” Roxas snaps, jerking his arm back. “I’m not anyone’s weekly philanthropy, I just get paid for sex sometimes. Riku, maybe he’s a runaway. From a country estate, or a boarding school, or something.”

Or a sanitorium, like Roxas, Riku adds because Roxas won’t.

Roxas says, “He’s clueless. There’s nothing to be afraid of. We should help him, you know?”

“I know,” Riku sighs through his teeth, raking his hair loose from the half-ponytail.

What he doesn’t say aloud is _Not having anything to be afraid of is, precisely, what I’m afraid of_.

“Good night,” he mutters, slipping into his room.

“Night,” Roxas says back, peeking out into the parlor again, worried.

“Good night!” Sora calls from the sofa, and he sounds half asleep already.

* * *

**{end ch. i.}**

**Author's Note:**

> for @shinraifaith, of course. and everyone else who puts up with me. i have been wanting to write a kh fic again for a while now, and after tossing around ideas this one is apparently it. what better time to post something creepy and fantasy but halloween month? idk how regularly this will be updated, i’ll be honest, that is so dependent on response. and meds, i guess, lmao. idk how many chapters it will be at this point, but we’ll see. thanks in advance for joining me on the ride!
> 
> * _mortsafe_ : iron ‘cage’ on a grave to prevent grave-robbery  
> * _Thaumaturge_ : miracle-worker.  
> * _Skazh’_ : a play on the Russian phrase ‘скажите, пожалуйста’ (excuse me/tell me, please)  
> * _resurrectionist_ : a body-snatcher, or someone who steals bodies of the dead to sell, usually to anatomists or… others…  
> * _Byt’ v’bezopasnosti_ : another play on Russian, essentially ‘be safe’


End file.
